Okay, this is now going in big circles and just making me laugh... Your beliefs are based on a subjective rendering of something YOU identify with as God's word (whatever that means).

Man's truth is about as arbitrary as you making statements calling your religion absolute truth. It just doesn't wash with me and nothing you can say will have me believing it. Lets just let this one lie as is, okay?

OK, deal, but since you brought up that my beliefs are based on a subjective rendering of Scripture, please bear an explanation of my position.



I've been wondering if you would pull up the "circular argument"! It's seems inevitable whenever God's infallible truth is used with issues of morality.

Mine is not circular but a spiral argument of which the ends do not meet. Taking the Scriptures as historical documents only, the Catholic Chuuch proves the historical fact that Christ endowed her with infallibility in matters of faith and morals. Then using that infallibility the Church assures that they are inspired. Thus, we begin with merely historical books and finish with inspired ones, but we don't use inspiration as the basis of our first premise.

So, too, could I prove the rightful Divine Ruler from history only, and after that view Him under the aspect of His Divine authority, obeying His legitimate commands, (which in this discussion He, through His written word, Sacred Scripture, says that homosexuality is a sin, and through Sacred Tradition of His Church teaches the same truth). Truth is consistent.



Yes. I'm glad you noticed that the infallible authority of the Catholic Church is grounds for my belief that homosexuality is a sin. When reading and interpretating Scripture for my understanding of the morality of homosexuality, I uphold the infallible and consistent teaching of the CC.

(while your idea of homosexuality is based only on your (or others) human opinion with a value proportionate only to your (or their) limited and fallible knowledge.)

Lula,

hate to break this to you but the CC is NOT infallible. Com'on. How can you believe that? Take a good look at the CC thru the centuries including one Pope murdering another and on and on it goes and tell us that the CC is infallible?

KFC,

Let's back up.

I know you agree that homosexuality is a sin and you'll say that you know that becasue it says so in the Holy Bible and that every book, every word in the Bible is true becasue it's God's inspired Word.

How do you know with certainity that every book and every word in those Books of the Holy Bible is the inspired, inerrant word of God?

You know this becasue of the infallibility of the Catholic Church who alone declared which Books were inspired to make up the Old and New Testament Canons and the CC also declared them to be the inerrant Word of God. Without the CC, you can't prove the Bible to be the inerrant Word of God.

So, c'mon yourself and disprove her infallible teaching authority in deciding which Books are inspired and which ones are not and you'll make some headway in you assertion that the CC is not infallible.

But until you have done so, I'd say your only going by what your Protestant Forefathers said when they revolted against the authority of the CC in the 1500s.

Really? What about the price of sacrifice? If a still-beating heart isn't cut with a sickle from the chest of the king at midnight in midwinter, there will be no spring. All life on earth will die, consumed by the frost, leaving a barren wasteland ruled only by the frost giants.

As with your 'God shall smite thee' example, we can't take the risk that it's not true. Would you like to see your family crushed beneath relentless glacier or consumed by hungry frost giants?

Because really that's what it boils down to. If you think the threat of possible godly retribution is enough to justify denying someone the possibility of happiness or misery, then you may as well start sacrificing people to the thunder gods just in case it will make the rains beneficial.

Superstition shouldn't be encouraged by government intervention.

On the infallible words of Christ is how I believe that.

Christ came on earth to teach a true doctrine which would last for all time. "For this I was born and for this, I came into the world that I should give testimony to the truth." Being All wise, All foreseeing, and All powerful, He took the means to prevent His Church to which He committed the taks of continuing His teachings to all men of all ages until the end of the world from ever falling into error and therefore corrupting His doctrines. This would be utterly impossible unless the Church could speak infallibly in matters of faith and morals in every generation.


What does Scripture tell us?
Christ did found a Church as a teaching body and enabled it to carry on His infallible teachings until the end of the world. In order to accomplish and be successful to His command to teach all nations, He safeguarded her from error by endowing her with infallibility. He promised to be with her always and the gates of Hell would not prevail against her. These words of Christ would be utter nonsense to the point that He'd be a liar and the gates of Hell would have prevailed if it could happen that the Church could be wrong in that teaching which she gives so authoratitaviely, ex cathedra.

Scripture tells us "the Church is the pillar and ground of truth". Unless the Church were infallible this wouldn't be true. How could our Lord require us to believe under penalty of damnation St.Mark 16:18, and to consider the Christian disobedient to the Church "a heathen and a publican" St.Matt. 18:17 if she wasn't His infallible teaching authority?

Would a All-Good God who wills "all men to be saved" and "to come to the knowledge of truth" fail to provide His revelation with an infallible witness? Of course not. Would a All-just God command us to believe St.Mark 16:16, and at the same time leave us at the mercy of every false prophet and lying teacher preaching a Gospel opposed to His? Of course not.

The Church Christ founded is spoken of in the NT as a divine, infallible teaching authority. Throughout the Gospels the mission of the Apostles and their successors is declared identical with the mission of Christ. The CC alone represents Christ, the Divine infallible Teacher in morals, belief and worship.

"As the Father sends Me (to give infallible witness to the truth), I send you." "He that receiveth whomever I send, receiveth Me." "He who heareth you heareth Me and He that despiseth you, despitheth Me...."



Don't make the mistake of confusing sinful members of the Church, including Popes. Papal infallibility doesn't mean that the pope can't make a mistake or commit a sin, or that he can teach without error on any thing that strikes his fancy or that he is inspired by God or able to make new revelation. It doesn't mean any of those.

It means that under certain, specific conditions the Pope when he defines ex cathedra, a teaching or doctrine in faith or morals, it must be believed by all the Church. The Scripture proof is St. Luke 22: 31-32. Christ here prays for St.Peter alone in his capacity as head of the Church. His prayer is certainly efficacious. Therefore, St.Peter and his successors, now the 265th one in Pope Benedict and on until the end of time, will be preserved from error when defining matters of faith and morals.

I too believe there are spiritual laws, although I dont believe that there is a God sitting in some mythical heaven waiting to judge me nor telling me that I should be this or that. I have great belief in my own personal spiritual experiences that God is EVERYTHING and EVERYWHERE and this being the case then I am part of THAT, ALL THERE IS. My experiences and your experiences all make up the sum of the whole with which this experience we call existence, exists.

I am neither right or wrong and neither are you. We just exist. Now you can argue with me until your blue in the face and so could I with you. This is my own personal experience and is not less valid than yours.

I dont believe that homosexuality is only a sexual condition as stated above. As humans we should be able to love each other, whether man or woman equally without thinking that there is some sort of heavy punishment. The great sin I belive is to not love and to not experience, but rather sit back and make judgements on others for expressing their emotions.

I think it is sad that humans have put sex and sin in the same basket. Although I believe that this is religions way of controlling the masses. Just like saying that they need priests to intercess between God and themselves. Just like the catholic church saying now they will excommunicate women who are ordained as priests. It all comes down to this one thing for me as once told by a great spiritual master.. "it is good to be born into a religion, but not to die in one."

 

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Yes, I think it was a key factor...certainly not the sole cause. Toward the end of the ancient Roman Empire, the family, husband and wife, and children, was not seriously considered or esteemed. Husbands beat their wives with impunity, divorce them at will, could sell their children to slave traders. The upper class Romans had lots of boy sex slaves. If you investigate, you'd find there's no doubt that homosexuality set the tone for all classes. It seems that Nero first invented same-sex "marraige" in the first century. Evidently after his marriage to two women, he had one male "wife", Sporus,(a boy turned into a girl by castration) and two male "husbands", Doryphyrus and Pythagoras. Male/male "weddings" were a part of the Roman culture for 250 years after the death of Nero in 68 AD.

A venereal disease, something like AIDS, called the Antonine Plague of 161AD, killed a fourth of the Roman population and was one of the first signs of the decline of the Roman Empire mainly becasue it decimated the Roman Army.



Yes, I was making a subtle comparison to that of our present culture. Decline in morals and character bringing about societal decadence...public health issues arise...political corruption...the traditional family in crisis...

Sorry, I look at what happened to the ancient Roman Empire and just don't see a rosy future for us if homosexual "marriage" becomes the law of the land.

How far would you extend your principle?

Is is right or wrong for an adult to have sex with a child? or would you draw the line here?

And if you make any restrictions, you cannot object on principle to the restrictions made by the Catholic Chruch. All you can ask is why the CC should draw the line different from the place from that chosen by yourself.



Yes, we do, and we exist for a reason...a life for a little while upon earth and an eternal life in Heaven or Hell. How we live this life decides where we'll be in the next.



The CC has never allowed priestesses and never will for it can't because Christ didn't. According to the CC, the priesthood is an extension of the priesthood of Christ, and it and the Sacrament of Holy Orders have been conferred directly to the Apostles by Christ Himself. As such, the late Pope John Paul II, of happy memory, declared ex cathedra that the Church “has no authority” to change the Sacrament to include women, whom Christ did not ordain.

While I don't believe for a moment the CC is infallible I DO agree with their stance (and applaud them) on woman priests. Their decision is based on the infallible scriptures which puts men at the head of their families and head of the churches as well. This doesn't make men better or more spiritual, it's just that God gave men and women diff roles.

 

We women are such second class citizens, even Jesus Christ denies us uh?!  No wonder the Muslims and other religions treat women the way they do!  I guess when Jesus rose from the dead who did he give the wonderous news to go and shar?  Who was in charge of his body when he died?  Why would he have washed the feet of a harlot, or was it the other way around, he allowed her to wash his feet? [I'm not as versed, I don't memorize the bible]  If he considered women to be of such little worth?  I sometimes wonder how these men came up with placing women in such a role?  How convenient to use the bible and the 'words' of God to put women where they belong?  Yet throughout the bible, who takes prominent roles?  The women are there with the men, playing their part!

Funny though because when I think of You I picture dressed just as your profile picture is, covered from head to toe and a thousand ;ayers underneath just so that men cannot see you naked because it is a sin and you might conjure up lustful thoughts.

if you would really like to know I was brought up a strict roman catholic and was even an alter boy as a kid. Funny though that the very priests you say Christ has chosen to ordain are the very ones who used to take me into the room beside the alter inside the church and rape me when I was 5.

I have no belief in a heaven or a hell. Like the previous pope said,

In 1999 Pope John Paul II declared that Heaven was "neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but that fullness of communion with God which is the goal of human life." Hell, by contrast, was "the ultimate consequence of sin itself ... Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy."

Wise words by the old pope, although I dont think many religionists truely understand what he was talking about here. For me it is a deeply private spiritual matter between me and the Consciousness I call God.

Well I think 2000 years ago things were a little different to how we live now. Perhaps women shouldnt vote? Or hold Office? or work? Maybe they should be barefooted and pregnant at home serving their master husbands at all times??

What roles did God give women mate?

Is it not the year 2008?

You see these arguments just prove the point that the fundamentalist religions are institutions which exist to control the masses and stop them from doing the very thing that Christ asked them to do ... and that was to become like Christ (not jesus) but the very essence of Godhood itself.

I'm so sorry that this happened to you. I also was RCC once upon a time. I researched the whole scandal and history going back to the 60's and even the 1940's on this issue and I couldn't help but feel the evil behind all this. Pure unadulterated evil.

Whole neighborhoods were affected in the Mass area not too far from where I lived. My
s-i-l said she stopped going to church when this all broke because she knew alot of the victims and saw their shattered lives. There were priests who hung themselves when this was brought out into the open.

The RCC will have alot to answer for and the lives that have been ruined will be upon their heads. Please don't hold the view of God thru the lens of the RCC.



God wanted men to be spiritual leaders of their homes. When he placed Adam and Eve in the garden it was clear. He said:

"I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception in sorrow you shall bring forth children; and your desire shall be to your husand and he shall rule over you." Gen 3:16

The reason for the fall in the garden was the fact that Eve usurped her role. When God said her desire would always be to her husband. He wasn't referring to sex. God was saying this is going to be a constant struggle for control. Woman is going to want to rule over man and it wasn't inteded to be that way. God gave the leadership position to Adam and mankind not womankind. I know it's not politically correct to say so but you'd have to take that up with God.

It was clear by Paul's letter to the Romans and Timothy thousands of years later that Adam was the one held responsible as the head of his family for what happened on that fateful day. Even tho it was Eve who, led by emotion, made a decision to go against God, Adam was held responsible for not being the head of his family. Quite often, women make decisions based on emotion and men tend to be more logical and that's just how he made us. It doesn't mean man is better he's just made different than woman.

As far as timing is concerned, God is not bound by time like we are. A day to him is like a 1,000 years to us.

 

No quite the opposite mate... from this I have learnt that it isnt religion that brings you closer to God but through the awakening of your own spirituality you can find God yourself without the help of anyone else.

 

good...... although I would add that others (individual believers) can help you find your way to God.


Sounds like you've got the basics in spite of what they tried to do to you.